Fake Outrage

I hate fake outrage. In our social media society, there seems to be new drama every week. Whether it's Dadbod, Deflategate, or the latest "normalizebreastfeeding" hashtag. I hate all of these things with varying degrees of fiery passion.

But it's not because these things shouldn't be talked about. My dislike of these things is not a value judgment. What I really hate is the fake outrage that accompanies each "trending topic." Each issue like the ones mentioned above seems to occupy the public psyche for progressively shorter timespans. It's almost as if the more drama there is, the faster each issue fades from the public eye.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We live in an amazing time. We live in the age of technology and information. We have more access and exposure to our world than any of the previous generations that have called this planet home. And yet this information age comes with a price. Our ability to process and digest this information has not increased. So instead we pretend to process, and we feign digestion. Why? We don't have any more time than our grandparents did. There are thousands more voices vying for our attention, but the same 24-hour day in which to address them all. We literally can't give our full attention to the things demanding it. So we pick and choose as many as we can, but fully invest in none.

Because of this, maybe our "Share This" widgets on social media should really read: "Share This & Forget."

One way this fleeting attention manifests itself is through the aforementioned fake outrage. We encounter information that should genuinely concern us, but rather than latching onto it and doing something about it, we become suddenly aware that this is the third time today that we have felt this way. And we also remember that we didn't do anything after feeling this way the first two times. So we resolve to act. Thus, fake outrage is born. We take to our preferred method of social media and we share and comment and argue and consider our job done and guilt banished. That is, until we wake up tomorrow. Nothing is accomplished other than a temporary relief of guilt for not actually doing anything.

We are all exposed to several different strata of drama in social media.

1. Close family and friends
2. Community
3. National 

Fake outrage can be a response to any issue at each or all of these drama strata. Maybe your cousin recently decided not vaccinate her kids. Outrage! Maybe your friends are all blogging about modesty because of some dork's stupid note to a girl on campus. Outrage! Maybe some celebrity said something controversial about a subjective moral principle. Outrage! 

Again, the problem isn't that we shouldn't have the right to talk about these things. That is a consequence of living in the society that we do, and it is part of the freedoms we enjoy. I just can't stand when things aren't followed by action. If you were truly outraged, you wouldn't have a "share & forget" mentality. You would do something. 

A quote that is often attributed to Socrates is "To be is to do." With this in mind, it seems that the ones most guilty of fake outrage are nothing more than armchair crusaders, searching for the next thing that they can share on facebook with a witty quip or two, hoping that someone will disagree so they can argue it out and stave off the guilt a little longer. 

So please, next time, spare me your fake outrage and stop the pointless "trending."

[Keep Following.]